Of Mischief and Magick
by The Elusive Author
Summary: Loki/OC - Once upon a time, Nat had loved foolishly. She had played games in the night, danced the edge of morality, and was caught by the Other and coerced into retrieving for him a dangerous object. Failure meant execution and, when the worst happened, she hid. Now she is coming out, and so is Loki, to fight back. Lady Loki included every so often. Darkfic.


**Author's Note**: So, look! A post-Avengers story! I am so sorry if you guys are readers of Darkest Darkness or Blood Red and are anticipating updates. I've had this little thing cooking in my head since the day I saw the Avengers (basically the third showing of the opening day) and I've just been waiting to put it into words.

* * *

**Prologue.**

Once upon a time, they had blamed her for the way he had turned out. They had accused her of corrupting him, of lacing those dark thoughts into his head that made him envious and sly and tiresomely wordy. They said she had instilled in him that desire to learn magick long since unpracticed but by the oldest in the Nine Realms.

Nat had long since lost her amusement with the rumours and the hearsay. She no longer canted her head to listen to the whispers in the quiet of still night. She focused, instead, on those small things that consumed the manifold desires she had developed when _he _had left her behind and become _friends_ with those damnable...

Once upon a time, he had been _her_ friend. She had shown him things, marvelous things, and taken him to the edge of fathomless abysses and revealed to him the birth of the stars that gave her so much freedom and life.

Once upon a time she had _loved_ him, however foolishly that had been, and trusted him and trusted that his heart also held affection for her. She had allowed him the secrets she had grown up possessing, then, and he sealed her fate in a promise made of blood that he would repay her for her generosity one day.

And he had abandoned her as soon as his beloved brother called him away from her to go play heroes in the small realm of the mortal peoples.

She had always been slow to anger, slow to irritate, and slow to act. She was endlessly neutral, decidedly unfriendly and yet she was equally _not _an enemy. Night could make rules bend for her. She was neither a friend nor a foe of anybody in the Nine.

Her mistake had been her unwillingness to continue being bothered by the petty arguments the golden gods of Asgard got into. She had let him out of her sight, let him slip between her fingers, and had not pursued what he had promised her.

Now that they had let her sink into obscurity, though, she began to long for the days that she was regarded as important.

The Night had always been friendless, even if she allied with the God of Mischief when he deigned to answer her summons. She was always alone, her form etched into the black expanse of the heavens, and wandered where only shadows could flit.

She _heard _things; secrets that were muttered between soft lips when the night was deepest and all others that watched and listened had looked away. She learned what desires lay in fickle hearts that dreamt of power, of resuscitation, and clutched these dark words to her chest. She could manipulate as well, she decided. She might have long since stopped paying attention, but what she heard always lingered like a dark curse in her heart.

When she learned the craft of taking other faces, she adopted it easily and made it into an art of itself. This magick she kept from _him _in every way and told him that it was an ability she always possessed, although she could see he did not believe her. When she chose to make her first change into that of a Jotun at the knowledge of what he really was, she kept the truth of the reason to herself, but she wore the form when he was present. He hated her.

She only wanted to make him feel like he wasn't alone.

He still abandoned her.

She would not admit that her heart was darker now as she wandered the space between the worlds. As she observed from a distance the great power of the darkest black holes, she refused to consider the betrayal of Loki Odinson. Laufeyson. The Nameless.

She just wanted to feel like she was not forgotten anymore.

* * *

It was in her wandering that she found _him; _the Other and his overlord, the dark creature that embraced death's personification with undying love.

She walked in the darkness of the nameless world she never knew could exist. Spires of ebon and steep cliffs of onyx, cold to her touch and blackened under the shades of her skins. She saw the creatures she never knew existed and adopted their face, changed small details, and walked amongst them. A female among males, she lingered in their world unseen. Helping and hindering in equal measures until she was discovered by the Other and his lord.

She slipped between their fingers, their dance an endless pattern that suited to amuse her until boredom and loneliness stripped her of her desire to play a game.

When she no longer danced the edge of the strange world, she manifested before the Other. He saw her for what she was, and for the first time in uncounted years, Nat was uncertain. He saw through the layer of magick that changed depending on what looked upon her unless she decided to reign it in, saw deep below to the black oil of her soul that covered the pale white of her first skin. He could look into her eyes and see, instead of the green she had adopted for _him_, the fathomless black that she was born with. He could see the white of her hair, like the coldest moonlight in the darkest night, and he could see the heart she wore on the sleeve of her black gown even while she hid underneath the strangely textured skin of the Chitauri.

Her uncertainty had been her downfall.

She was caught in the web Thannos wove with his words and his intent, at the mercy of his loyal servant, and she felt little else but the dying of her amusement and wry anger at the fact she had allowed this to happen in the first place.

They asked her what she would give her if she were allowed to live. She fell further when she replied that she would offer them anything, if they would accept it.

They wanted the Tesseract.

* * *

She did not remember where she had heard the name Tesseract, but understood it was a belonging of the Asgardians.

Once upon a time, she had walked among them as an equal, although at the edge of the society that didn't understand Night. Nat had not been among them in so long that she forgot what it was like to share in the company of the golden lords that she always felt so strange amongst. They did not readily accept her back when she returned but for the Gatekeeper, Heimdall. He always understood the necessary loneliness of the Night and had long since come to an agreement with Nat that they may have a friendship between them. He was a better friend than Loki, Son of None. He never abandoned her and was always present where the Bifrost allowed travelers to and from the Realm Eternal.

She had long since lost the need to travel with the Bifrost, had become one with the dark so thoroughly that she could not be separated from it even long enough to travel the light bridge safely.

The shadows were her medium and wherever there was night, she was present when she needed to be.

Heimdall's shadow served as her gate.

"Tesseract," she said once she stepped out of his shadow. "Have you heard of the Tesseract?"

Heimdall didn't need to look at her physically to see that she was injuried and frightened.

"The jewel of Odin's treasure," he said. His deep voice was a physical manifestation of everything the night could have been. It reverberated in her very bones and echoed in the dome. "It has long since been lost on Midgard."

Nat scowled and looked to the opening. She could see many horses galloping towards her and on them...

"I shall see you another time," she said.

By the time Loki arrived, Heimdall had exited the Bifrost to meet with him and Nat was gone.

* * *

She found the Tesseract on Midgard, as Heimdall had said, but it was in the grasp of humans and she could not, would not, interfere with the humans directly. She had long since bound herself by the laws Odin inflicted upon her when he gave her the cloak of night to wear. Silver manacles bound her wrists in this realm, but she managed to walk among them for a time nonetheless with bracelets instead of manacles and in the form of one of their own kind.

She left them in frustration, although this was tempted by curiousity. They were driven to understand the cube they held in their greedy hands and Nat was not obliged to ignore them as they studied it and stressed it.

She was lingering beyond their system of planets when she heard _him._

She would always remember his voice. She would always listen for him even though it cost her dearly to do so. She turned to him, reached out for him with the vastness of space, and caught him as he fell in arms of blue. Her eyes were red, irregardless of her feelings for him, but the glimmer of green was something deep and profound as she looked upon the face that had so long ago smiled and laughed.

His bitterness scalded her as she took him to the Other and sold him to them in exchange for her freedom. He would retrieve the Tesseract for her, she would give it to the Other, and she would return Loki to his father and mother and fade back into obscurity herself.

She did not expect Loki to fail.

She had placed so much trust in him, given her boons from her own treasures, and he returned to his realm and left her without so much as an apology to face the wrath of those creatures she couldn't understand.

It had never been in her to flee until that day.

She fled to him, settled herself in his cell, and clung to the shadows at his back with no hope of hiding forever.

They were hunting for them, and Loki was no safer to hide behind than a boulder.

They needed the Tesseract to save themselves.

Nat began to wonder at what she might do that would save them both, because her heart could not bear to let Loki die while she lived on, no matter how much it had suffered under his dispassion.


End file.
